When I first joined the blogging world, I fell in love with online giveaways. I entered them, and entered them, and won! That’s right – I won several. What’s my secret? The only way to win giveaways, is to enter!
When I enter giveaways, I don’t use a forum or program to find them. I mostly enter giveaways hosted by my bloggy buddies or whatever shows up in my social media feeds. I have joined several sweeps, giveaway, and contest sites but I find them to be cluttered and difficult to search. My OCD brain cannot see the important information on a busy list page or cluttered website. Banners that blink and advertisements that look like a giveaway, but aren’t, made me turn my back and run away from these types of places.
The creator of Giveaway Center agreed. There should be a clean website available to entrants. A better way to search for giveaways that interest you, a cleaner way to view them, and a place bloggers WANT to list their giveaways at! A place that is beautiful and appealing to the eye.
Giveaway Center is beautiful, clean, no blinking banners, no advertisements – the perfect way to find the giveaways you want to enter and nothing more! In my opinion, they created the future of giveaways, giveaways that are easy to view, easy to enter, and easy to manage… STOP…. manage?
Yes, Giveaway Center has a way you can manage the giveaways you have entered and find them again when it is time to claim your win. No more missing out on an amazing prize over an error with your email. Giveaway Center’s “My Entered Giveaways” allows you to store information for your entered giveaways until..whenever you want. You can keep them there forever, you can delete them once you have checked the winner announcement, or you can delete all ended giveaways at once with the click of a button. I think the only way this portal can get any better is if you have a way to see the end date and if you have a way to save the giveaways you won. I’d love to look back after a year of entering giveaways diligently and see my trophies (smile).
So how do you do it? How do you enter a giveaway at Giveaway Center?
First, you need to create an account. This is simple and takes less time than it takes to enter a giveaway to complete. After you do this, you can immediately start searching and entering giveaways.
Search? There are several ways to search for relevant giveaways. Popularity, Category, Value, Location, Start/End time period, and Entry Method. You can search these categories one at a time or all at once. The drop down options you select are saved during your session unless you change it or “Clear All” and start over.
So, if you are pregnant mom, who only wants to view popular baby giveaways ending soon in the US AND use a blog comment as the method of entry – you can search that! For example, if you are looking for a stroller, or hoping to win a large baby item, you can filter the search by the baby category and the prize value. Because you know a stroller is going to be listed above $100, select the Value of $101 – $500. This will automatically show you relevant giveaways with the desired prize value.
Please take note: the Popularity feature, shown on the left corner of the photo above, allows you to search for giveaways that are potentially “low entry“. (Low entry giveaways mean your odds of winning are higher.) The entire feature is actually much more than what you see in the search, but also, when you are browsing, you can “want it” directly on each giveaway card. This votes for the prize so it can be filtered properly in the popularity section. The more you use the “want it” button when you see a great prize, the better every user’s experience will be!
Don’t have time to enter giveaways right now? That’s okay. While you are browsing Giveaway Center for your favorite giveaways, you can save them for later. Maybe you only have time to enter a great giveaway that uses a giveaway form, like Rafflecopter or Giveaway Tools, but a really great giveaway requires you to leave a blog comment. You want to enter, but you don’t have time to leave a comment that will actually get approved. You can “save it for later” for when you have more time to spare to leave that comment. When you’re ready, select your “My Saved Giveaways” portal and enter the giveaway.
Coming Soon: Giveaway Center is working on a new iPhone app that will allow you to search and enter giveaways on the go. While you are waiting on your husband or kids – you can enter giveaways! Sitting at the doctor’s office – enter giveaways! Cooking dinner – enter giveaways! Can imagine how awesome this will be?
For Bloggers:
Bloggers need to promote their giveaways further than using their own social media accounts. Your clients are expecting you to do your very best to promote your own giveaways. Once you have a Giveaway Center account, you can easily do that by selecting “List a Giveaway” on your account’s drop-down menu. Bloganizer will appear with a quick, one time, registration page. After you complete your Bloganizer registration, you are directed to the submission form. As with any form used to enter giveaways into a giveaway sorting/promotion system, it takes between one-five minutes to complete. (Quick Tip: the more you know about your giveaway from memory, the easier it is to complete. Switching back and forth between the tabs, trying to remember end dates and product value, can delay rapid progress.)
As soon as the submission form is complete, you are asked if you would like to submit another or return to Giveaway Center. Upon returning to the main page, you will see that your giveaway is immediately showing in the feed! NO submission wait time! This is perfect for bloggers who run giveaways with short durations.
I enjoyed browsing Giveaway Center looking for giveaways to enter, managing my giveaways, and listing them. I think the concept is brilliant and well overdue! A clean place to search for giveaways without all of the distractions is wonderful. I can’t wait to utilize their services for promotional purposes and to get back into entering great giveaways!